Saturday, April 02, 2016

Labour's right is learning from the last civil war

Labour's right is learning from the last civil war

As the Labour left fights to defend leader Jeremy Corbyn, Nick
Clark argues that the early 1980s show how focusing on internal battles
ends in giving way to the right

Liverpool town hall was a stronghold of the Militant Tendency (Pic: Miguel Mendez/Wikimedia Commons)

A battle was raging between the left and right inside the Labour
Party in the early 1980s. The Labour right feared they were losing
control.

Two recently re-released books, Hammer of the Left by 1980s Labour
politician John Golding and journalist Michael Crick’s Militant, look at
what went on then.

They are handbooks for a new generation of Labour right wingers
learning how to fight old battles. The left, both inside and outside
Labour, have lessons to learn from the 1980s too.

When the Labour government was booted out of office in 1979 it had
spent the previous two years making workers pay for a bosses’ crisis. A
cap on public sector workers’ pay sparked a series of strikes in the
winter of 1978-79—the “Winter of Discontent”.

There was discontent inside Labour’s own ranks too. Party conferences
and its national executive committee frequently passed motions opposed
to Labour government policies.

None of this bothered prime minister James Callaghan who, in the
words of Golding, saw conference decisions “merely as declarations of
opinion”.

He took Labour into the 1979 general election on a right wing manifesto—and lost.

Workers were not inspired to vote for a party that had spent years attacking them, while union leaders held back the struggle.

Michael Foot (Pic: National Archive of the Netherlands)

Yet anger among Labour activists produced a swing to the left. Denis
Healey, the right’s replacement for Callaghan, was defeated by the
left’s candidate Michael Foot.

But this wasn’t enough to satisfy the Labour left’s desire for
change. They demanded the right to re-select sitting MPs before
elections and a change in the way the party leader was elected.

Previously the leader was elected by Labour MPs only. But in 1981 the
left won a proposal to elect leaders by a “college” of union bloc
votes, Constituency Labour Parties and MPs.

This small rule change was enough for some right wing Labour MPs, who
feared they would further lose control, to threaten resignation.

For the left, it was a huge step forwards. That same year, Tony Benn
launched a challenge for Labour deputy leader. Benn’s campaign rallies
attracted thousands of Labour party activists.

They were excited by the rise of the left—and the prospect of a
Labour Party that could offer a genuine alternative to Margaret
Thatcher.

This excitement reflected a genuine desire among sections of workers
and trade unionists for a party that can fight for their interests
against the Tories and the bosses. For many, that party was Labour.
But for Labour politicians, winning elections means having to appeal
to voters from all sections of society—not just workers and the left. So
they talk of governing in a “national interest”.

What they’re really saying is that they’ll try to manage capitalism
responsibly—and that means acting in the bosses’ interests. Marxists
Tony Cliff and Donny Gluckstein explained that this contradiction is at
the heart of the tension between the left and right inside Labour.

They wrote, “Labour voices working class aspirations but only to the
extent that they can be fitted into the workings of the national state.

“The balance between the two factors is represented in the split
between Labour’s left and right—each side representing one aspect of the
common reformist whole.”

Because the position of Labour MPs relies entirely on being elected,
this rightward pull is stronger on them than the activists at Labour’s
base.

Unfortunately Labour’s focus on parliament and elections also means that MPs are more powerful.
So when a group of Labour MPs broke away to form the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 1981, it actually strengthened the right.

Crick described how “Foot was coming under increasing pressure from
the right”. “The implied threat was that if he did not act against the
far left, the ranks of Labour MPs would shrink still further,” he wrote.

Spurred on by reports in the media of a “Trotskyite” takeover of the
Labour Party, Foot launched an investigation into the far left group
Militant.

It was the first of many witch-hunts, but the real target was
Labour’s hard left around Benn. By attacking Militant, the Labour right
hoped to make it harder for the whole left to organise.

For their part, the Bennite left was paralysed. The Labour left also
feel the pull of elections and the need to keep the party together, even
as the right attacks them.

What’s more Labour’s near-defeat at the hands of the SDP in a
by-election in the previously safe seat of Warrington shook the
party. Many who backed Benn started to fear that the left had gone too
far.
Benn narrowly lost the deputy leadership election, and he began to
lose the support of a layer of trade union officials and soft left MPs
he had relied on. In 1982 he agreed not to mount another challenge.
The truth was that while there had been a shift to the left among
Labour Party activists, the working class was still demoralised and
fragmented.

This led to a shift to the right and a drain on Labour’s support.

The move to the left in Labour was important—it represented a radicalisation of a significant layer of party activists.

But the left’s enthusiasm for rule changes and block votes was a world away from the actual experience of the working class.

Recent industrial defeats had left workers with little confidence in the possibility of change.

The focus on internal party battles did nothing to relate to that atmosphere, let alone start to change it.

Now, faced with the reality of electoral defeat, the left began to chase after right wing votes.

Foot backed Thatcher’s war in the Falklands in the “national
interest”. To his credit Benn stood against the war, but was
increasingly isolated. Even Militant refused to back the call for the
withdrawal of the British fleet.

Neil Kinnock (Pic: flickr.com/dushenka)

When Labour lost the general election again in 1983, Foot was replaced by Neil Kinnock from the party’s soft left.

He was backed by many Labour members who had supported Benn in 1981, as well as most of the unions.

Now Labour’s return to the right began in earnest. Kinnock made it his task to get rid of Militant completely.

This began with an attack on the Militant-controlled Liverpool City Council in 1985 for setting an illegal budget.

Kinnock’s plan to “modernise” Labour also included calling for the
imprisonment of Poll Tax protesters in 1991—just as they brought down
Thatcher.

At a time of huge bitterness towards the Tories, Kinnock managed to
lose the elections in 1987 and 1992. His legacy was to pave the way for
the era of Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and New Labour.

There are important differences today. Labour’s leader Jeremy Corbyn
and his shadow chancellor John McDonnell have spent their entire
political lives on the left.

And the vote for Corbyn by more than 88,000 registered supporters—not
actual Labour Party members—shows there is a radicalisation taking
place beyond Labour’s ranks.

But there are similarities, and the danger of repeating old mistakes.

Faced with vicious opposition from the party’s right, some on the left are gearing up for more internal battles.

Labour conference this September is likely to see lengthy and
complicated debates over party rules all with the aim of just keeping
Corbyn in place.

It’s important to stand up to the Labour right.

But the lesson of the 1980s should be that focusing on internal battles eventually means giving way to the right.

More than 200,000 people voted for Corbyn as leader. Very few of them
will want to take part in bureaucratic wrangling over rule changes in
interminable party meetings.

But thousands of them will have joined the Stop Trident and Stand Up to Racism protests this year.

Thousands more will probably join the People’s Assembly demonstration against austerity on 16 April.

Defending Corbyn from the right will mean building on this
potential—not in a fight to change

Labour, but in a fight to change
society.

Read more

Hammer of the Left: the battle for the soul of the Labour Party
by John Golding
£10.99Militant
by Michael Crick
£10.99Jeremy Corbyn, Labour and the fight for socialism
by Charlie Kimber
£3.00The Labour Party—a Marxist History
by Tony Cliff and Donny Gluckstein
£8.99
Available at Bookmarks, the socialist bookshop. Phone 020 7637 1848 or go to bookmarksbookshop.co.uk

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